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The 5 Stages of Unplugging

I read an article this morning about the 5 stages of grief (confronting death) and how they apply to coming into acceptance of a previously rejected truth. Yes, I know, there’s no end to the ridiculous interpretations of this played-out pop-psych list, but I was curious about how this might apply to an AFC coming to grips with unplugging from the Matrix, so I did a bit of searching and what did I find on my blog roll search but this:

1. Denial – Still Plugged -In: “These game guys are a bunch of clowns, there’s no way this works on women. Women aren’t stupid. What a bunch of misogynists.”

2. Anger – Post-Red Pill: “This is ridiculous! Why should I have to jump through all these hoops for women? I just want to be myself. Why couldn’t I have been a Natural Alpha®? I blame my parents/siblings/teachers/God/liberals/feminists/media/society, maybe George Sodini, Andres Breivik, James Holmes wasn’t so crazy after all.”

3. Bargaining – Unplugged: “Well maybe it does have some good points…but, forget the hot girls, they’re way outta my league. I’ll give it a try if it can help me get around the bases with a plain Jane. Do I have to wear the fuzzy hat and black nail polish?”

4. Depression – Bitter Taste of the Red Pill:“Wow, women really respond to this puffed-up act? And guys spend big bucks on it and wind up with more ass than a toilet seat? And I just joined up for this? The world is sad and so am I…”

5. Acceptance – Game Awareness: “Maybe this IS the way things really work. I guess I should give up the gender relations mythology I’ve been holding onto…hey, what do you think of these negs I came up with?”

6. Jaded* – MGTOW Permutations: “Fuck learning all these rules. Sex isn’t worth it and women aren’t that fun anyway. The last thing I want to do is learn routines or the 5 stages of pickup. There’s too many websites, too much to read, I can’t remember it all much less sort it all out. Who has all that time to go out and chat up women anyway? It’s not like I see any women under 40 at work at my engineering job to practice on. Video games and porn are more fun and more available. I just haffta look good and let the women come to me”

* This is a late addition to the list, hardly original and arguably relevant, but I added it for precautionary measures.

Before I get the predictable howls of “someone did this before you” (h/t Badger) allow me to put my spin on it. I get a ton of PMs from forum members, and read threads about guys with friends or relatives in, or just getting over, horrible relationships and how they’ve tried to unplug them only to run into stiff resistance. Looking at this process to acceptance it’s no wonder why.

So my discussion question for today is this; how did you unplug? Was there some moment of clarity that opened your eyes? Did you go through a process like the one described here? Are you maybe still struggling with a certain phase?

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I’m on stage 5, How did I get there? Having had relations with 2 girls before the age of 25, having not read ‘The Game’, i got in contact with Rock Solid Game. Krauser and co ‘enlightened’ me, over the past 2 years through building inner value and practice I’ve finally reached step 5. It’s a hard slog and I’m forever being enlightened as I found out 2 weeks ago in Zagreb with Jimmy Jambone, Krauser and co.

I just reached stage 5 for the second time in my life again and I refuse to look back. If you prove me wrong or right twice, then you’ve swayed me. For the last few weeks I’ve seen examples of everything the Red Pill world confirms. It’s time to stay awake this time. Red Pills and Crown Royal anyone?

I was what you might call a natural once I hit about 16/17. Not so much a natural because I always did well with women (I didn’t always, but with some I sure did)…..but more because I always questioned why men would tolerate such obvious crap behavior from women.

I never tolerated it, and that in itself generated a lot of attention from girls. Then somehow the matrix sucked me in during a time in my 20’s. Only later to spit me back out when I discovered the mano-sphere.

I do think that there is an alternate path to number 6 on there. I am at number 5, but have evolved past just getting women into my bed to the point that I am very interested in MRA subjects. I don’t hate women, I fvk a lot of them, but I still believe we have to fix the problems that have been generated over the last 50 years of misandry.

Lumping all MRA’s into number 6 in my viewpoint is almost an equivalent of shaming. Number 6 on your list to me would be the people that still couldn’t get game to work for them. Something that is absolutely not universal in the MRA group.

I’ve been lurking since you started this blog. First off, this is the first blog to which I send all my “recruits”. I can’t tell you enough how much I like your writing and incite.

I’m 43. I unplugged 2 years ago. Before we had kids (almost 8 years ago), my wife and I had a pretty good relationship. She used to call me “the volcano” because I would occasionally blow my stack. Basically, she would push me on certain issues, I would repeatedly tell her to stop, and then eventually blow. Back then I used to suspect that she actually wanted me to get that mad. I just couldn’t bring myself to believe it, however. After we had kids, she had a really bad case of post part-em depression, and became a raging bitch. Every time I tried to point out the potential medical issue, she would tear me a new one. Because we had a kid, and I knew this was a medical condition, I was a “nice” guy and kept working on it, hoping she would get better. I basically got so beaten down that I finally told her I was leaving, and why – and she broke down crying and apologized, saying she knew what she was doing, but couldn’t stop.

Things got a little better, but she was still bitchy and taking out her frustrations on me – all the while denying that she was doing it. This went on for about 5 years. The lightbulb came on slowly. I was promoted at work, and all of a sudden the sex went from 1/wk with a roll of the eyes, to 1/5 days, with much less complaining. I noticed it immediately, but couldn’t believe that my promotion could be the reason (women aren’t like that! :).

Later that year, we went on vacation and I ended up going to the hospital with what turned out to be a kidney stone. My wife made very little effort to see how I was doing as the ambulance came to take me away (I thought I was having an appendicitis attack, due to the way the pain referred, and I had already waited a long time to call the ambulance). I was so pissed at her behavior, that I vowed never to put up with any of her shit again. I basically became a bit of an asshole, although in reality all I did was stomp down on bad behavior. Things improved immmediately. Then, shortly afterwards, I read “the misandry bubble” and my interested was piqued by a reference to “the venusian” arts. All I had to do was read a description of what a “shit test” was, and I knew I had struck gold.

When I was younger, I had the following experiences/insights:
– I had a girlfriend get visably aroused when I told her about how I almost ended up in a fight with a guy at a gas station (I had taken karate for about 8 years at that point). I already knew about women who went after inmates, but I couldn’t put 2+2 together to realize that women liked violent men. At the time, I was shocked and appalled at my girlfriend’s behavior.
– I had developed the attitude that all women were manipulative, and I refused to indulge. I had learned to respond to shit tests, but didn’t have any idea why they did it.
– I used to walk up to any woman I found attractive and strike up a conversation with the intent of getting a date.
– I was a complete wise ass with a quick wit and sharp tongue. I basically learned C&F by accident. I recall vividly watching a girlfriend get turned on at a party when she introduced me to her best friend, who instantly tried to insult me. My response to her friend was swift, wise, and unanswerable, leaving her speechless but smiling – and my girlfriend looked at me like I was a god among men. In hindsight, I could have taken her in bathroom right then if I wanted.
– I never had trouble getting a girlfriend, often pissing off my friends because it was so easy.

That was the good stuff. Here’s the bad:

– I thought that men were pigs, sexually speaking. I thought women all wanted relationships.
– I really thought women wanted nice guys. Despite having clear insights into reality, I denied the obvious simply because I was successful with women. Although I could meet women and start dating easily, I tried to be a “nice boyfriend” and paid for it, although I definitely had boundaries.
– I preferred sex with girlfriends as opposed to one night stands. I attribute much of this to my first girlfriend lasting 5 years and a bad experience with my first ONS, and in hindsight, this was the worst part of my personality at the time.
– shortly before my first child was born, I insulted a family member accidentally. I made a wise-ass response which offended them. After some introspection, I decided I was going to try to be “nicer”. This was clearly the beginning of the end for my marriage.

When I unplugged 2 years ago, I really spent my time in only two stages – anger and acceptance. I knew the truth the first time i read about shit tests. My reaction to game was “shit, why wasn’t this obvious to me? I had all the pieces, I just never put it together. I basically read everything i could at that point, with more focus on LTRs. I became angry at the fact that society tells men such lies. Maybe I’m still a little angry, although I’ve basically accepted it. Now I look to unplug men when I think they are capable of listening. Young men get it right away. Older men, not so much.

I have some good stories about how I used game to turn my marriage around. But I’m out of time.

When my friend introduced me to Alpha Gameplan, i could believe what i was reading. He told me everything that i had ever lived and experienced, and he never even met me. For weeks i only felt three emotions, and those emotions extremely powerful. Anger, sorrow, and lust were all i felt for what must have been 2 months. The Red Pill was worth the pain though, i would NEVER go back.

I am probably still in the bargaining stage. I am holding some hope in the back of my brain that I will meet “the right one”. I understand it’s futile, but it takes time for old ideas to totally go away. I think I went through the denial and anger stages before being aware of the red pill. I knew what I was doing wasn’t working, I could not believe that there were other options, and when I began seeing things work for “men who didn’t deserve it” I got angry. I think it was finding these blogs that ended the anger phase. I accept reality for what it is but haven’t really been successful at it yet, just trying things here and there and seeing the seedlings of success. It’s only been a few months, so we shall see. Then again, if I do start seeing success I am sure the depression will hit hard because it just doesn’t seem “right” yet.

If I’m to be honest, I’d say I was already at an advanced stage when I hit the manosphere. That is, I think I went through the earlier stages and was inert until I took the Red Pill. I probably sat at Stage 3 until the wife surprised me with the dovorce. So, I went through the earlier stages, but just didn’t see the connection to the Red Pill. In fact, I think the AFC probably goes through the first three or four stages.
I don’t think I stayed in Stage 4 long, but I’ve always been a guy who thinks bad thoughts/memories should be put in a bag and dropped off at the next train station.

That’s a great list because you added stage 6. Never thought about it before but I’m there. I’m in my late 40’s, divorced after living the middle-class wife/kids/house routine with a raging feminist. Learned LTR game and have been teaching it to my sons. My girlfriend is great but marriage will never happen (I know exactly how it would change the relationship dynamics, been there, not going back). Life is good because we make it good. Thanks Rollo for shedding more light on the adventure.

1) Gf I was really into breaks up with me because I acted very blue pill beta. I was crushed and spend months looking for answers.
1) I get in shape but not much success with girls son I browse Seddit and the ball starts rolling.
3) I read the Way of the Superior Man, No More Mr. Nice Guy and Too Nice for Your Own Good and Feeling Good (by David Burns) and these books set a healthy foundation
4) a piece of the puzzle is missing though and I stumble upon Roissy and have my AHA! moment.
5) Roissys pill was harsh but it illuminated a lot that I knew but couldn’t put my finger on. Through Roissy I find Rational Male and everything becomes much more defined. Roissy is a blunt blade while yours is a surgical knife
6) I start absorbing everything in the manosphere. I read all of rational male, Roissy, alpha game plan, Dalrock, in mala fide, Roosh v, Badger Hut, Private Man, SolvemyGirlProblems and a lot of the comments.
7) I begin using the red pill tactics and mindset in real life and start having success in dating. People treat me different, I don’t get played by girls that often and my frame is strong and I’m no longer ashamed of my masculinity. I spin plates, cold approach and next girls and it felt like a drug. I thought I was god for a couple months

Now I’m at the point where im fully aware of all this and I see it vividly day to day. I pushed away a few friends in the process but the pendulum has swung back.

Sometimes I wonder if it’d be nice to back to when I was naive but I doubt it. The level of self respect and awareness I have makes things better and easier to understand.

The ex gf breaking up with me was the best thing because had I not searched for answers I would have never stumbled upon the manoaphere. Now I’m at the point where I’m not so adamant about the red pill. At first the excitement of having the knowledge and using it was so powerful that I was a kid in a candy store. I felt like I exhibited some second tier behaviors for a few months but now I’m comfortable with myself and content yet I’m still working towards better things.

I’d give my journey another look for anyone in a similar position. I think reading the books before the sight gave me a good frame of mind and finding the manoaphere shortly after was like adding jet fuel to the fire.

A lot of people want to change but few want to put in the hard work. That first period of introspection was painful when I realized how much of a symp I had been but it got easier.

If I could give credit to people it would probably be you and Roissy first and foremost. I definitely went through and anger and then overcompensating phase so keep that in mind but I have found an equilibrium. I went from try hard to comfortable with myself and i feel much more adjusted.

Someone asked me one day around age 17 who I was trying to impress. After a lengthy high school career of being the strongest and fastest person in my class, varsity football, good grades, lead act in the plays – none of it mattered to anyone. It never attracted anyone. I noticed that girls loved the guys who treated them horribly.

Seven years of college and grad school confirmed this. Seven years where I didn’t even bother to lift, exercise, or make myself attractive in any way. There was no longer a point to any of it, as it was irrelevant.

Eventually I began lifting and exercising again and became stronger than before (albeit not faster) because I wanted to be strong enough to at least carry my aging parents to the car if they needed to get to the hospital. I desperately wanted to avoid being a burden during my physical prime, despite the fact that my seven years of grad school and 3.85 GPA amounted to dust in the wind.

Fast forward to today – I’ve been on Stage 6 for a long time. Probably since about age 18. I’m 27 now. I have embraced a form of narcissism for the last 3-4 years. It’s likely I will continue to embrace it the rest of my life. My most important interest is self-interest. I can’t see myself giving that up for a female when I weigh what they bring to the table against my own happiness and wellbeing.

Funny part is that I was like this years before the Manosphere, MGTOW, or any of it even existed. Life is just like that for some people. It does warm my heart a little to know there are others out there much like me however.

As with the 5 stages of grief, it’s important to note that the 6 stages of unplugging don’t necessarily happen linearly. There’s the shuffling back and forth between stages as ‘progress’ is made.

My first unplugging came several years back in college after I ended the relationship with my gf at the time for crappy behavior. Things weren’t going smoothly for us and she pulled a ‘why don’t we just break up’ and so I called her bluff. She’s regretted it since.

What followed was some of the best times of my life spinning 3 active plates, and having sex on-demand like tap water. Life was great…till the BPD came along. She hit all the right latent co-dependent buttons and I descent to blue-pilldom seasoned to taste with an addiction to Cluster(B)fuckery had her (thankfully) end the relationship some years later.

The histrionic/BPD/narcissism actions on her part caused serious WTF lights to go off in my head. The severe splitting and re-writing of what went down fucked with me till a friend (and psychologist) sent me reading material on Cluster Bs. Around the same time Roosh (I only knew of Roosh, VK & Roissy at the time) wrote an article that linked to the Misandry Bubble. From there I discovered the manosphere and now have around 34 blogs I read regularly.

Half-way through my second decade with a scorched-earth BPD, God help me. Therefore I have a bit of 2 through 6 all the time. Once I finally extract myself, I might have something worthwhile to say. Until then I’m only a human sacrifice.

It wasn’t as easy as simply unplugging from the Matrix for me. I am a little pre-game in terms of age so I caught the front end of the Feminist movement, but it was actually worse than that. In retrospect I was born an Alpha in all my attitudes and inclinations and was encouraged by my mother for the most part. My father on the other hand was a dyed in the wool Beta. A good man and genuinely heroic soldier and officer during WW II, he turned into a somewhat depraved version of Judge Smales of Caddyshack fame when he dealt with me, He went to great lengths to dominate, belittle and infantilize just about every chance he got. Men we are talking about an individual who addressed his married Airborne Ranger son as ‘Honeybun’, publicly and repeatedly, I kid you fucking not.

Equally, he was one to hold court and took a delight in recounting usually well embellished tales of my misdeeds. I wanted to lift weights, go out for track, swim, do martial arts; he demanded games -tennis. golf. It became standard fare with our family and friend group that I hated sports, because I didn’t especially want either to do those things and neither sit on my ass watching team sports on tv. I also became famous for hating the outdoors when I wanted to hunt and fish, but cordially detested gardening. Being from an old NY family I went to a prestigious Fabian socialist private school, but I could never summon the necessary contempt for the rest, yea majority of my fellow citizens. I was groomed to be a suburbanite and NYC commuter; I was to have… ‘a Career’, when what I really wanted was wealth and independence. Thus, left the reservation more definitively than Geronimo ultimately by finding my way to the 82nd Airborne before finding my way to more lucrative though admittedly less fulfilling pursuits.

I was taught rigid, groveling Beta/White Knight absolutes about women and my typically horny mind was frequently short circuited by my early intermittent successes and how they came to pass. So, for me coming upon Game was rather more remembering than learning, restoring the text of some purposely blacked out documents or finding your adoption records. Being married it has been useful, within and without that circumstance shall we say, but the main thing for me is the reconciling who I am at heart. That even as an only child I am not the Black Sheep I was told. Game has untangled a very knotted hose, in more ways than one if you will forgive the pun, because in my opinion Game is about very much more than simply picking up available women. It is about how you view yourself in this world and how you go after what it is you want; will you be Oliver Twist meekly begging for more gruel or deal swiftly and decisively with the Gordian knot and take what comes. Game, the burgeoning Manosphere have been blessings since it has given tongue, script, and scripture to what had been at times long forgotten impulses. Thanks for all of it, and your efforts on this blog as well, and to Hell with the feminazi’s and de-nutted socialists…’ride right through ’em, they’re demoralized as Hell’

I was married for about 15 years (2 kids) when things started to get shitty. My wife was becoming angry more and more often, and she took it out on me. When I tried to talk to her about it, she’d vehemently refuse, as if the suggestion that talking might help was insulting. Each episode would last a few hours to a day, and then she would become cheerful again.

The frequency of these episodes started increasing from once or twice a year (early in the marriage), to two or three times per week. By that time, I knew to stay out of her way and just avoided her, because that’s how she wanted me to handle it. My youngest child was only 6 at the time, and was really upset because “mommy is so mean to daddy”…. it wasn’t abuse or even overt at all, it was passive-aggressive stuff with some simmering anger behind it, and my daughter could see it clearly.

Of course, being the stupid ‘modern’ male that I am, I just did everything I could to try to ‘make’ her happy. It was hard work, very ego-deflating and one-sided, but I was trying to make my marriage work… and I wanted to support her the best I could until she got over this. I must have seemed like such a spineless, supplicating person, deferring to whatever she needed and ignoring my own needs completely.

A couple of years of this and things actually start getting better but, lo and behold, I catch her cheating on me. Obviously, things weren’t better, she had simply found a diversion for herself. We try to work through things with counseling (9 months of it!), but she’s not really interested in saving the marriage in the end, so we get divorced.

Anyway, getting over the cheating, getting divorce, and taking the red pill were somewhat simultaneous to me, so the stages of grief for all of these things were intertwined.

Denial: I couldn’t believe, after doing everything right and putting so much love and effort into things, that she would cheat. Denial: everything will work out and our marriage will be better than it ever was because I’m a thoughtful, loving, empathetic man.

Anger: bits and pieces of anger throughout, but I’m hardly ever an angry person, so this wasn’t a major stage for me.

Bargaining: reading tons about what women want in men, cowtowing to her in any way I could to make things work out.

Depression: the cheating destroyed me. It was like my entire self was smashed into tiny bits. I knew I had to rebuild myself, and I did. It took a year or two, but I’m now a confident man who will never enter that level of codependence again, and even if I do, I will cope much better if it ever falls apart.

Acceptance: Still tough some days, because I do love her. I was with her for 25 years and parts of me still want to believe that she’s the person I thought she was. She is not, though, and I mostly accept that… I just have relapses sometimes. The worst part is that she never apologized or admitted any wrongdoing at all. We still talk amicably because of the kids, and she’s had lots of opportunity to say something, but she won’t. She is too weak to do that.

Anyway, through all of this, I realized that I wasn’t enough of a leader in our marriage. The blue pill had been force-fed to me for my whole life and I bought it hook, line, and sinker. I had thought that we had a marriage of equals… and we did, but it was too equal in too many ways and in a lot of situations there was no real leader.

Once you see all your beliefs destroyed by cheating like this, it opens up your mind to other possibilities that I wouldn’t consider before, like the red pill. So, I hit rock bottom, and that was the beginning of my renaissance.

Never believe what women and society tells you about what women want. They will tell you things that they think sound good, but it’s not always the truth. Look at actions.

A pivotal concept I was introduced to is called “personal fable” which basically means that people believe their own thoughts, feelings, and experiences are somehow unique and not experienced by others.

Before I started reading men’s stories, I read women’s for almost two years. As you read the same things over and over from different people, you begin to pick out behavior patterns.

Realizing we are all alike is both a blow to the ego and a revelation into our humanity as we finally feel part of the great life story.

I guess it started for me in the 90’s. I was talking to my friend, saying obvious stuff about who chicks go for, and I had a revelation: So chicks are stupid. We should find a way to use that stupidity for our advantage.
My friend told me that it’s not possible. It took years of stumbling in the dark later, but in retrospect on that day I gave up on “the One”, tuned out the “it will happen on its own” crowd and picked out behaviors that I will not indulge in for any kind of pussy. I still thought that you needed money, but it was a solid start.

Around stage 4-5 still. Like others, I would up here after a handful of relationships that didn’t work (interspersed with dry spells). Beta and shat on too many times, I just couldn’t understand why because I was “doing everything right”.

Now I’m at the point where I’m flabbergasted why women respond so well to being treated as an afterthought in my life. Once I actively sought to understand things better (chose the red pill), I made the simple decision to NOT allow myself to get into a relationship for the time being, until I figured things out a little better.

You know the Victor Frankl wisdom, “you can’t control everything, but you can choose how you react”? Well this was my choice in how to react. And it’s my right. No relationships, no boyfriend label, no exclusivity.

What blows me away is how thoroughly the script has flipped, how the plates I spin are HAPPIER with the SCRAPS of attention I give them, compared with the women I used to pedestalize. I just don’t get it. What is it in the female psyche that hates being treated well, and seemingly loves being treated as barely worth my time?

I am not out to punish them, I am not trying to get back at all women or anything like that. I just ONLY do what I feel like, when I feel like it. Somehow this is translating into me getting better at fucking, too.

If they’re disappointed because they have expectations, it’s not my problem. I know they want more from me, more of my time and more romantic overtures, commitment, etc., but I also somehow know that going down that path will MAKE THEM UNHAPPY. BECAUSE IT ALWAYS HAS.

Sooner or later they’ll tire of this, I imagine… but with one of them, this has been going on for over half a year. And I sure as heck ain’t gonna bring up the conversation. Another one pretty much knows I’m banging other girls, and she’s happy with what she can get from me! WTF?!?!?!?

Why was I treated like shit for being respectful, considerate, and appreciative within my relationships, and why am I getting rewarded for being selfish and unapologetic?

I feel like a scientist who keeps seeing his experiments turn out a certain way but doesn’t have a good theory/equation yet. But I’ll keep doing what works, even if I don’t know why. To paraphrase Roosh: “ladies, you made me this way.”

And yes, this was originally for dealing with death, but the massive resistance people have to the red pill is, as you noted, a resistance to the death of self which in a peculiar way is similar to some religious teaching about transcending existence.

And I can’t tell you how many times the stasis mode of “people are the way they are” gets spouted out of people’s mouths, especially women and especially if you change or the person doesn’t want to change.

As if learning a new skill, or ability, or practicing something, until you are good at it, isn’t change.

Stage 6 definitely. Reviewing previous interactions and outcomes retrospectively it appears to me that the game model is more accurate more often than not and there would be benefits in acquiring more game skills.

However at this stage I can’t see myself improving my skill set, I’m not convinced the rewards are worth the effort in this field. I don’t begrudge exponents of game the rewards at all.

I do enjoy the theory and concepts though as well as now being able to articulate them.

For me I probably mentally retired from the whole process around the very late 20’s , possibly early 30’s. Not consciously but a general drift and reduction of effort as I concentrated on work and travel which was more rewarding, I am now 40 and can’t see myself getting back in the ring.

Whether its with or without game there is a significant amount of time, effort and strategy involved for questionable reward.

I’ve had my encounters but have remained single ,solvent with decent career and travel experience so I consider myself now quite lucky to have dodged a lot of potential bullets. Discovering the manosphere has given me some validation of lifestyle and ability to push back on the shaming language.

In retrospect I passed many shit tests through laziness, indifference and taking them at face value through lack of understanding . Unfortunately I always went for the ‘nuke from orbit’ option as I tended to switch off immediately. In hindsight, it probably confused the hell out of a lot of girls as it the interaction was over before it even started.

Game information would have been very useful to me 20 years ago and I encourage the younger guys to experiment with it whilst they have the time and energy.

For me unplugging means that I’m now naturally very cynical on motives and have a sort of “MGTOW + fun with the best prospects but not taking any of it too seriously” attitude – disposable pleasures over any meaningful pursuits. The prize is worth a lot less than it was so I have a lighter attitude to it all.

I went through the first four stages with regards to feminism, liberalism and political correctness when I first became an MRA blogger, long before I heard of game.

Then I discovered the red pill regarding diet and nutrition.

By the time I found game on teh interwebz, I had already become quite open to rejecting conventional wisdom and mainstream society’s mass media indoctrination.

When I first encountered the now-defunct “Reality Method” blog and his description of shit tests and hypergamy, I immediately “unplugged” and found myself at stage 5. Complete epiphany.

As for stage 6, there’s another permutation you might consider – Jaded misogyny born of disillusionment. This is the lament we’ve seen guys like Roissy and Roosh write about.

Women no longer have that mysterious, intoxicating allure that gave you such joy to simply be in there presence when you were still plugging in. You now tend to notice and focus on all her faults, flaws and imperfections. That is certainly a form of jaded I never thought I’d get to…but here it is.

Even when I encounter stunningly beautiful women, I find her visible flaws or note any negative aspects of her demeanor or attitude almost as fast as I notice the beauty of her figure, face, skin quality and hair.

Misogyny is certainly one of the primary active ingredients of the red pill.

Interesting question. As a young men I happened to be attractive so it was pretty easy with chicks for me in those days. They were all in acquisitive mode – so they were all nice and all good to me. I presumed them to be the sweetest persons in the earth – constant source of pleasure and unconditional love for us, men. I have not studied game I did not need it in the first place.

In my mid twenties I begun my job as an advocate dealing with divorces. I was determined to protect those angelic women from baaad, baaad devilish men. To my suprise, I witnessed behaviour of women even satan himself would be proud of having. And I observed something more. Those women doing those acts of ultimate betrayal to their spouses were completely unaware of doing anything wrong! Minute later they could be in acquisitive mode with their new boyfriend – all innocent and sweety. Higher knowledge, morals and awareness, some higher soul must have been denied to women. Our elders were right in this one.

That was my red pill. After those experiences I could NEVER trust women to be loyal. Neither I can take any of them seriously. I like them the same way I like children. Plus sex. I definitely will not enter in any form of serious business with them – marriage included. I play with them, spend my time with them. I enjoy their feminine energy and pleasure in their acquisitive mode, but I am no longer able to look at them as my equal “partner”. They are definitely inferior in many values I admire and hold for myself. No material for serious matters in this enviroment.

I had a gf at 21. Funnily, i used some game on her. I escalated on every occasion; didnt text her much or called. After two weeks, we fucked. Then, she dropped the bomb; this 23 y/o lady wanted me to pay for her boob job. I refused and got dumped. A year later, i met this girl and i caught oneitis. White knighthood, texting all day, long calls, i made her a diamond pedestal, not paying attention to her action, you name it. I told her my feelings and then it all disappeared. But she insisted on keep being my friend and i declined the offer not because i knew about the ljbf rejection but because i was angry. Why cant i get a gf when every woman i meet says im a great guy? Am i crazy? Are they all crazy?
So i decided to search about dating. I came across stuff that went against my programmed mindset. I denied it for some time because not only i was trying to get women, i was also trying to understand how that worked. Then, i read about it; women go for the highest value man they can get. That was my first concentrated dose of the red pill. Everything started to make sense; the bad boys, the attention whores, the gold diggers, the religious woman who made a “mistake”.
Im having more success thanks to this manosphere.

Great post and the comments are the most insightful I have seen anywhere. G, you need your own blog. Want to hear the rest of the story. Athol Kay could use the competition. And I could use the help. Running MAP but will take more months of hard slogging. Don’t want my sons to have to go through a late awakening so am force feeding them red pill wisdom, including Rollo. Keep up the good work.

I started out as a classic Nice Guy. My mother hated my father, and my father was a loud, overbearing Alpha, who (as time as a family man wore on) became increasingly unsuccessful, dishonest and angry.

So, by the time I was in college, my idea of healthy masculinity was pretty much shot to hell. I was determined to be “not like other men,” which was a euphemism for not being like my father.

I got married in my late 20s to a girl who is smart, funny, but prone to rages, controlling and overbearing. She essentially became a surrogate for my father.

As we got older, she started criticizing and controlling me more and more. I thought I could talk it out. I thought I could reason with her. I thought I could ask her to be kinder and more loving and more supportive, and if I came up with the right words, she would.

That failed, of course. We became distant, eventually settling into being co-parents and roommates.

Then, hypergamy reared its head. I found out my wife had a special friend, a man about my age, but never married, no kids. Sporty, fun, well-traveled, don’t-give-a-fuck attitude. Her coffee breaks and tennis matches with him were her source of fun, but her time at home was spent dealing with money problems, arguments and the shit of life. She became infatuated with him, and emotionally regressed to about age 15.

I found out, lost 50 pounds, got in great shape, and started reading like crazy. I threatened him repeatedly, cockblocked him every way I could, spied on my wife, and ripped the threat of infidelity out by the root. It got worse before it got better, but eventually got better. Once I knew what to do, saving my marriage took about 6 months.

But mentally, my Red Pill transition took about 2 weeks. It went from Marriage Builders –> No More Mr Nice Guy –> Athol Kay, Roissy, Rational Male and the rest of the Manosphere.

I don’t see the point in Stage 6. Once you understand our biological nature, it doesn’t make sense to become jaded and cynical. You can shake your fist at millions of years of evolution, but it won’t change anything.

“Misogyny is certainly one of the primary active ingredients of the red pill”

I disagree. Taking women off the pedestal does not require misogyny. I agree that there is a certain allure to women when you pedestalize them, but I don’t miss this at all because it was tantamount to living in fantasyland. I’ve left the theme park now, and while things might look a little more drab sometimes, at least it’s real.

How did I unplug? The hard way. Implosion of of 12 year marriage with kids. Usual story, I think. Cheating wife, etc. I’ll throw in that the females in her family have a history of this but I was too much of a naive pup when we met to think that it would happen to me. Stupid mistake. The history was concealed until after the first kid was already here so in for a penny in for a pound I suppose. Anyway, in the aftermath I had sense enough after getting my feet back under me to get a divorce. I won! All of it. Yay. Though no one really wins I don’t believe.

So…

I went online looking for something, anything to try to make sense of it all. Somehow stumbled on to Athol Kay. Read it all and started to compare what he was talking about to my first hand marriage experiences and put two and two together to try to reverse engineer where it went wrong. Let’s just say my first big mistake was wife selection and it was downhill from there. My family of origin was no to low conflict, hers was BPD exhibition. I was behind the ball the whole time and coupled with little awareness of the dynamics I was lunch meat.

From Athol I found Dalrock then Roissy, Roosh, Badger and then your blog.

As far as stages it’s difficult for me to delineate game acceptance stages apart from the similar stages of recovering from divorce as I was doing both at the same time. Learning the game dynamics helped me make sense of the mess and see my part in it and sped my recovery. I definitely went through a stage where I was burning with white hit rage against one woman in particular and where I was just angry at women in general. Really angry as in all women except my mom and sister are lying whores kind of angry.

I didn’t have a stage where I was in game denial because as soon as I started reading this material I could immediately correlate the information to both good and bad experiences with past girlfriends and the marriage episode.

I started to put the specific techniques into practice. I have always been rather social and fun so to speak, in shape and successful in career so I felt that a good chunk of my outer elements were solid. My inner game was in tatters because of AFC indoctrination, lingering shame about the circumstances of the marriage ending, etc. So I took baby steps. I tried very specific things. Such as I would go to a social gathering and take up space, be mindful of my body language, leaning in, etc. and gauge the result. Then I started stepping it up verbally, literally just saying whatever came to mind to women and if it was highly sexual but delivered correctly it worked and was a lot of fun to be free with myself in that way.

After a few months of tinkering under the hood , returned to the daring pool at large. Had a mini LTR where everything worked like it was a script from a soap. Initially this left me dissatisfied as I felt it was far too calculating on my part. I expect at that time what I was doing and saying was not yet internally congruent. I think I was also getting rid of the last bits of being angry.

Now today, I feel pretty good about it all. Not desirous of living the pro player lifestyle and if being candid it’s not in my skillet, but I do feel like anytime I should want female company it’s no great effort to secure it, or put another way it doesn’t feel like I’m acting to a script or pushing a stone up a hill to get what I want. I have women in tap when desired and looking for more. Each seems to have their niche in my mini-verse.

I am now mulling over where to go from here. Marriage is not even a consideration again. It would be foolish at this stage. So I think my main focus is continued self development and challenge self to continually up the quality of woman I have available.

All in all it’s pretty fun these days and in retrospect I feel oddly fortunate to have gotten divorced from the ex. Imagine not finding out and being duped into supporting her another 30 years. That would induce some anger stage.

I work to cultivate an attitude of of being centered. I care about the outcome because I care about my results when I put effort or time into something but I leave behind all vestiges of butt hurt or complaint I may have indulged in before. That’s the goal.

How did I unplug? You guys! Seriously. I’m still in the process and I back
slide but I’m fighting it and I won’t turn back. My old me disgusts me. I’m in a sexless marriage and looking for advise when I found Athol thru Vox and then here and Dalrock and Keoni and some others. I may not be able to save my marriage but I can save my life, now.

(1) The omega believes that everybody gets somebody. He tries everything he can, including game, and fails to pull any women to which he is attracted. He is essentially a 5’6″ person trying to dunk in hoops.

(2) The omega realizes that everybody gets somebody…if they are willing to take anybody. The omega realizes he has standards. The omega honestly assesses his place in the SMP. He takes a good hard look at his strengths and weaknesses. He comes to the sobering conclusion that he is in the small minority of men who cannot/will not (effectively the same) raise their SMV to a level that will get him a woman to whom he, in turn, feels any attraction. He is angry and hurt.

(3)The omega realizes that beggars can be choosers in that they can choose to be alone. He seeks success in other areas of life. He listens to Vox Day’s advice:

“[What] irrecoverable omegas should do to wring the best out of life is to remind themselves that relationships with women are but a small portion of life itself. The average married couple has sex 92 times per year. That leaves 75 percent of the calendar sexless anyway. Isaac Newton never married and was said to have remained a virgin, and while he was certainly peculiar and at least somewhat socially dysfunctional, few members of homo sapiens sapiens have ever risen to such glorious intellectual heights. This isn’t to say that one should aspire to become the next Newton, as that is all but impossible, but to look to him, and others like him, as a potential model for a generally happy, successful, and valuable life.”

He realizes that while life with a woman to which he feels attracion might be a 10 out of 10, that life alone is a 9 out of 10. And that ain’t bad.

This metamorphosis, not game, is what would stop shooters like Cho and Holmes and Harris/Klebold.

I disagree. Taking women off the pedestal does not require misogyny. I agree that there is a certain allure to women when you pedestalize them, but I don’t miss this at all because it was tantamount to living in fantasyland.

Perhaps you misunderstand my use of the term “misogyny.”

To clarify:

Feminism and SWPL-mass media society uses the term misogynist to marginalize and dismiss any man that expresses politically incorrect beliefs and opinions regarding gender and sex without having to address the man’s actual argument.

It is a scapegoat term equivalent to calling someone that points racial descrepencies in the mass media narrative “RACIST” or “NAZI.”

In other words, I am a misogynist, but not because I hate women for irrational reasons, but because I hold the views and beliefs that trigger that marginalization and dismissal by blue pill poppers.

Also, when I use the term misogynist, I’m actually speaking more about contempt rather than “hatred.” i.e. Most women are bitches and selfish-feminist twats unless and until they prove otherwise. That’s because in today’s Brave New World Order, most are. They’ve been socially engineered to be that way, and very few escape that influence.

” My reaction to game was “shit, why wasn’t this obvious to me? I had all the pieces, I just never put it together. ”

Yeah, that’s exactly how I felt. I was like okay so that’s why such and such worked in a positive way with this girlfriend and this is why such and such had the opposite effect. It was like I knew it and I’d seen it in action with myself and watching others, but I had never had put in front of my nose in black and white in one spot. Instant light bulb on moment. Wow, I could’a had a V-8!

Your lifestyle determines what kind of girls you attract into your life. Approach Anxiety determines the number of shots you will have and Calibration will determine the probability of success you will have with your shots.

Most PUA or Game advice can be categorized into 2. and 3. Starting to get unplugged from 2. and 3. is merely impossible. The point where I have started because everything was so new and so fascinating for me.

The problem with 2. and 3. is that you will always get caught into techniques and routines and if your “textbook” or sosuave.net forum does have the exact answer, then you are screwed. Because deep down inside, your are still an AFC. You have information on to act, but not the underlying principles. This can be a very bad vicious circle because you want to consume more and more knowledge hopping to able to seduce women.

That was how I have felt for a very long time.

Then I discovered http://www.solvemygirlproblems.com, chateau heartiste, your blog and the book of Pook. It changed my mental game to focusing on my life first. Get your life together, be ambitious and have goals in life other than women. Basically going through the different parts in the order described above. And that is actually the the order in which you should approach game. Going the reverse order will only do you harm since there will be no foundation and you will collapse sonner or later within your routines and techniques.

By going the route described above, you also accept all the pain and learning experiences that you have to go through. You also learn to accept that, there is no magic spell. It is all hard work.

“As with most gender relations, the problem lies in the power differential. The woman may be on the pedestal, having doors opened, chairs pulled out, and meals paid for. But actually it is patriarchy that is asserting its power. How? Simple. The woman may be on the pedestal, but it is the privilege of men that has put her there.”

I unplugged this past New Year’s after spending the night with a girl I had been seeing for a few months and the next day found out through a buddy that she was also sleeping with 2 other dudes. I was simply unaware that women naturally Spin Plates and that she was simply a Carousel Rider, riding three at a time, possibly more. After the New Year’s experience, I sought answers and stumbled upon sites like Sosuave, and blogs like The Rational Male, Roosh V, Spearhead, Cheatau, etc.

I’m 34, single, never married and no kids with a notch count in the mid 20’s. Have had a few long term relationships having always had a Beta-AFC mindset and thought in order to get laid often you need to be dating a girl and the thought of Spinning Plates was immoral and only players did that. Was completely unaware of The Community, The Crimson Arts, Seduction, and Cold Pickup… Now working on my game through RSD and trying to get it to the point where I can be good enough for cold pickup, seduction, and same-day lays. Have been spinning plates in the meantime, but dropping them left and right because I’m still pretty bitter towards women in the sense that all I want to do is have sex and not have to pass shit tests or waste time getting to know them and dating in general. Lately, I just walk away from the fickle behavior of women I meet and the showering attention they expect to receive through orbiters and white knights simply because it’s weak entering their emotional frame. I’ll eventually get through this phase, but it’s a learning experience in the middle of a journey to becoming the best man I can be, which goes more into inner game.

At first thought I was being a MGTOW misinterpreting the definition, which is too extreme because I enjoy being with women and the pleasure that goes with it. However, I have abandoned the fairytale idea of finding a woman that is feminine, nurturing, loving, and generally happy. Marriage & Family seem like a fading proposition at this point in my life and I seem to be content in accepting that. I think Roosh is right in implying that western women are toxic and poisoned by culture and feminism. Maybe that just goes with the territory when you unplug and see the true nature of women at their core…

So I guess I’m a guy that has gone his own way for himself and just enjoy the pleasure that comes from women that I encounter along the way. As Mike Damone said in Fast Times, “you don’t care whether she comes, stays, lays, or prays. I mean whatever happens, your toes are still tappin”

At the moment I keep bouncing between stage 4 and 5. Working on trying to spend more time in stage 5 than stage 4 but my financial situation is making this ‘challenging’ (yeah I know Rollo, probably another ‘Buffer’ ;] )

My unplugging story.
I got divorced 3 years ago. I didn’t waste much time trying to jump back in the dating pool and started using PlentyOfFish. I wrote my fair share of lengthy, custom-crafted, heavily-beta love letters to women I’d never met and enjoyed a dismal response. Then one time when I logged out of POF, it showed an advert for David DeAngelo’s ‘Double your Dating’ ebook. As I read the spiel I thought ‘this stuff must be a joke?’. I didn’t buy the ebook then and there but I reluctantly signed up for his ‘dating advice newsletter’. My opinion at the time was that I could hardly receive any advice that would make my dismal dating life worse.

So over the next 3 or 4 weeks I read these outlandish ‘tactics’ and [probably fake] readers letters. I didn’t act on any of the content but I did start to just’sit and observe’ and that’s when the matrix started to occasionally glitch and splutter.

During my daily commute on the train, I’d observe how the good looking babes would choose to sit next to the inconsiderate jerks who were draped across one and a half seats, barking loudly into their cell phones about last night’s crazy shenanigans, instead of the respectfully quiet and meek business men who hurriedly cleared the seat next to them of coats and newspapers so the hot babe had somewhere peaceful to sit.

While waiting in line to buy my lunchtime sandwich I’d stare in fascination at the loud construction worker, still dusty and dirty from working on the site, playfully but firmly telling the cute girl behind the counter ‘exactly’ how he wanted his sandwich. He’d make her jump through hoops getting the toppings exactly so. Yet the cute counter girl wasn’t getting frustrated at his fussiness. If she wasn’t grinning and fluttering her eyelashes, she was outright giggling at his mock exasperation and apologizing for ‘messing things up’. When it came to my turn to order my usual pre-made sandwich, her eyes looked straight past me, towards the door of the sandwich shop. Her mind still occupied with the construction worker. (all beta’s recognize that distant look in women’s eyes).

Then at the bar after work, I’d see a pair of HB7 office workers stand about eight foot away from a group of good looking but oblivious beta’s. The girls would loudly chat, toss their hair every few seconds and act mildly drunk despite being on their first small glass of red wine. Every 30 or so seconds, the girls would quickly glance over to the group of beta’s, see no signs of attention and discreetly move six inches closer to the group, chat a bit louder and up the vigorous body language a notch. When the girls got about four foot away from the group of beta men (who were boringly discussing the day’s office politics) they stopped advancing, loudly shared a joke between themselves and screeched with laughter at the punchline. When that didn’t grab the attention of the beta’s, the girls had a disgusted look on their faces and silently walked to another part of the bar.

Well after a couple of weeks of observation Mr DeAngelo offered me a huge discount on the ebook. For the sake of ten bucks and because the stuff in his newsletters seemed to tally up with my observations I paid the ten bucks and downloaded ‘Double Your Dating’

That night I read it all in one sitting. When I got to the end I slumped back in my computer chair, dazed and battered by the foreign knowledge I’d just consumed.

I didn’t feel like I could handle trying everything in the book at once so I chose a couple of the simple ‘no-risk’ things. Namely taking charge of my personal space and moving slowly and deliberately in an unhurried manner (if your rushing and moving quickly, it telegraphs to women that you are at someone else’s beck and call, that you have to be somewhere before someone more senior to you gets upset).
At the time I had a long commute to work that involved getting on two different trains. So the next morning on the busy station platform, even though I felt like an idiot, I stood upright and mildly alert, made sure my feet were never closer than a shoulder’s width from each other and let people walk around me instead of my usual ‘shuffle out of their way apologizing’ trick. To my surprise, guys bigger and taller than me were walking around me with their heads slightly bowed, avoiding eye contact. Women seemed to be comfortable standing right next to me while waiting for the train.
Then the busy train arrived and everybody scrambled to get on board. I didn’t scramble on board, I calmly and confidently walked onto the train. I wasn’t preoccupied with getting a seat at all costs. That sort of concern was beneath me now, I was a man with GAME! Here me roar! (or not 🙂 )

All this coincided with starting a six month contract at a place where no one knew me pre ‘Dave D.’. So that morning I coupled ‘walking unhurried down the office corridor’ with ‘make eye contact’ plus a dash of ‘say Hi’. ALL the women flashed a smile and said ‘Hi’ back. Much to the surprise of the beta in me, there were no sexual harassment cases brought against me because of my outrageous friendliness.

At this place I worked in an area with 7 guys and a plain Jane type. Two or three times a day a HB8 friend of the plain Jane would enter our work area to chat about lunch arrangements with her or other girly matters. The entrance of the HB8 would cue the sound of 7 office chairs swiveling around, their occupants ready to spray copious amounts of beta attention at her. But not me, I carried on with my work as if I hadn’t noticed her arrival. Just like Dave D. told me to. After 30 seconds of the HB8 holding court with the beta’s, I’d [slowly and deliberately] get up and wander off to get a coffee or see someone from another part of the office. My frantic, inner, beta hamster screamed at me to go back and bask in the diluted attention of the HB8 at the base of her pedestal. But I said no, the red pill me knew what I was doing. This scenario happened a few more times over the next few days but I made sure I wasn’t acting predictable. Sometimes I’d stay in the room while the HB8 held court, but halfway through her attention vacuuming, I’d turn my back to her and jump on the phone to someone.
A few days later, the HB8 asked me if I wanted to go for lunch with her and her friend. My Inner beta hamster was having an absolute fit, screaming ‘say yes!, say yes!, SAY YES!’ But red-pill me knew better “Oh, I can’t do lunch today girls. I’ve got other plans. Maybe another time.”. And then without waiting for a response, I pick up my jacket and [calmly and deliberately] stroll out of the room to get on with my other [non-existent] plans. To this day the image of the confused and slightly stunned face of the HB8 as I walked away is still crystal clear.
Over the next few weeks I did start socializing with the guys and girls in the office but always made sure to keep my frame. Surprise, surprise, it turned out the HB8 was in a LTR but happy to suck up the beta attention. But I also found out that the plain Jane had a red hot and freaky side to her which she ended up sharing with me a few times. And then my six month stint was up and I moved on.

For me, I don’t think it was one moment of clarity, but rather years of flashes and hints (“glitches” in the Matrix, so to speak) that added up – from friends getting dumped by their wives because of classic beta behavior (wives’ hypergamy kicking in), to me suddenly being able to pick up materially more girls as I went past age 30 and achieved business/monetary successes (realizing my SMV). And the older I got, the more “glitches” became evident. So I went looking for the proverbial red pill. My first exposure online was nomarriage.com that I found a few years ago, which I thought was pretty funny and somewhat insightful (the original owner sold it and its garbage now). A few weeks ago I discovered your blog while searching for the old nomarriage.com site and then found Roissy and Dalrock. But I think this is the best blog out there as it fully articulates the random thoughts that have gone through my head the last 15 or so years. So for me it was not a “choice” per se if I should take the red pill. It was more of a journey to actually find it. And find it I did. So where do I stand now and what is my next move after being unplugged?

As way of background, I am white, 38, 6 ft, 195 (but need to be 175), self-rated 7 in the looks dept, top 5 MBA, introverted, live in a very large U.S. city, highly successful businessman (~$750k annual income), drive a 911, and should be able to “retire” very comfortably by age 42 given my current annual burn rate. Most people would consider me a person who “has his shit together” and the ladies love introducing me to their wrinkled mothers. But I live in 2012 America, in a large liberal city to boot. Not sure if I consider myself Alpha as I don’t think I have a lot of “Game” per se, but I do what I want to do 100% of the time and I don’t take shit from anyone, women included. So maybe I’m a lower Alpha. Anyway, feminist society has given me the following options at this point in my life:

1. Get married, which has the following two outcomes:
a. If somehow I manage to hit a red 23 on the roulette wheel and she doesn’t divorce me, I work until the ripe old age of 60, because 1) I need so to support her ever growing thirst for material consumption and 2) pay for private school for the 2.5 brats she spawned (assuming its even my own kids). And of course lets not forget only having sex with one woman the rest of my life, who gets less and less attractive by the day. Hhmmm, not a lot of upside here.
b. She walks out on me after 5 years and ass rapes me in court, takes half of the millions I saved up, and gets alimony for life because she got “accustomed” to an absurd lifestyle that she herself instigated simply because there was money in the bank and no consequences to her actions. This causes me to work my ass off until 60 to make the money back that she stole from me. Hhmmmm, this outcome doesn’t seem too great either.

2. OR! – Don’t get married, which has one outcome:
a. I retire at 42, live in my major American city in the summer and Buenos Aires in the winter. Sleep in, workout every day, and do as I please. And all the while sportfuck Asian imports and naïve grad students while I tend to my outside business interests. My skin glows a radiant bronze as I sniff a scent of napalm every sunny morning.

Rollo, are you sure that #6 is a progression from #5? It seems to me that #6 is a regression back to #1, perhaps a different #1 but #1 none the less.

Acceptance seems to me to always have been the final step to any difficult situation, thought or feeling. At the point of acceptance I am liberated from it and it no longer burdens me.

It seem to me that some of the MGTOW is a bit of burying the head in the sand. I’m sure there are some guys that feel really happy and healthy to go their own way but I would guess that a large percentage of them are really avoiding their feelings and actually feel ostracized.

I’m 42 years old with exactly 42 female notches since the age of 16. I would have had more success, but I was in a fantastic 15 year relationship which ended w/my losing her to breast cancer. Those 15 years w/her were in my prime (24 – 39), and I stayed relatively faithful (6 one-offs), mainly due to still being a blue-pill beta provider, but also because I WAS happy, no doubt about it… and I would have stayed w/her to the end. Those 6 affairs were ‘must-haves,’ low points while partying, etc., but no one that I would have left her for. I don’t regret anything, because I was w/her at the end.

I consider myself a decently handsome natural. I’m not a male model by any means, but I’m athletic and confident, so I’ve never had a problem w/women.

Anyway, about three years after moving on from my loss (and a few quick relationships in between) I LTR’d a solid 8.5 thirty-year old career girl and proceeded to beta myself into oblivion in just under four months. (Jaded DC girl… go figure) She shit tested incessantly and I failed every single one. I wasn’t used to my personality just not working on a girl. I was distraught that nothing I tried was working to bring her back into my orbit. I realize now that I just hadn’t concieved of how radically the relationship rules had changed. That and also I’d never had a career SWPL girl (and NEVER AGAIN). I wasn’t used to working at a relationship like that, and I failed at it pretty badly. After the ugly break-off, I literally googled “how to handle a bad breakup,” and found Roissy, then Roosh, then Rollo, then Athol. I worked at trying to understand it all. I read every link, every post, all the archives. I began to understand the complexity and dynamic of game. Eventually, I combined a decent natural game with a lot of the theory and science, sarged intensely for a bit, and began to feel rather competent in spitting game.

After a few SNL’s and short-terms (where game worked as advertised, no doubt about it), I began to filter for longer-term and eventually found a very feminine 29 year old who now seems a good fit for an LTR. We’ve been in it for seven months and no real red flags have popped. She’s conservative, fiscally-aware, responsible and giving. She submits because that’s what she recognizes made her mother happy (her parents are still together after many years). She shit-tests only lightly (feminine programming) and loves that I bat her down without blinking. Above all, she actually thanks her lucky stars that she found a manly man (her words) who won’t let her run the relationship, and she wants us to work out. She cooks, wears dresses and stays in great shape. She proactively tells me when someone has approached her even when I’m not with her. (I’ve always seen that as a positive.) She’s eager in bed and wants to please. She’s second-generation Croatian and has that tall, dark, thin, gypsy look. She’s maybe a 7.5, but worth every pound of it. She’s actually a joy to be with… no working at it. I’ve been following the golden rules (“don’t judge her words, watch her actions”), and she seems quite genuine.

What I find most satisfying at this point in my life is that I have fifteen years of solid relationship game under my belt, while she has never lived with a man. Obviously I know she will be different from my former, but not gender-wise (in the most important sense), and I know what she needs.

Sure, with still decent looks and now solid game, I can continue to bag young women, but men my age will admit (if they have the courage), that you eventually do slow down, and the chase becomes work. My advice is to find a decent woman at least ten years your junior and let her be thankful that you did.

The red pill was bitter at first, but I recognize that it was a tiny discomfort compared to the end results, once you develop the tools to winnow the wheat from the chafe.

5. Acceptance.
6. Success. Having more ass than a toilet seat by applying Game.
7. Jaded. Having f*ed a lot of women, you don’t feel the same enthusiasm for sex that you had when you where a beta loser. All pussy is pussy.

It’s like being fed up with some food. When I was a child, I loved chocolates because they were forbidden by my mother. When I grew up, I ate lots of chocolates for years. Now, I see a chocolate and I don’t feel any desire.

How did I unplug? My gf of 6 years dumped me in a cruel way. I didn’t understand why so I searched the Internet. This brought me to the manosphere (“Eternal Bachelor” was the first blog about these issues back then).

I know it’s mundane (some guys divorced and lost their kids) so I think it could have been much worse. But she was my first love and for me it was the end of the world. I have never been the same again.

1) I think it says good things about what you’ve done with your blog that you’re able to link a bunch of your posts in each of the stages. Part of why I like this blog and consider it a good place for a lot of men to start unplugging is that you cover a wide spectrum of stages. The more hardcore PUA sites tend to start from “okay, you’re unplugged and ready to embrace this, let’s get crackin'” which is hard for a lot of new guys to get into.

2) I think a stage called Embracement could be added. It might be at a fork in the road where you either go toward Jaded or Embracement. Embracement would be where you finally accept that yes, this is how things work, but that’s not a bad thing and, in fact, you welcome it. You accept and understand people despite their human faults, and you can love women and the fact that they do crazy shit and why they do it. And just in general, you foster a love for your fellow human beings…you see that everyone is flawed despite the fronts we all try to put up, and you can accept them for who they truly are. It’s like an extremely honest way of living and people pick up on that non-judgemental vibe really quickly and are relieved to meet someone they can really be themselves around, and you embrace them for that. This is a hard feeling to describe, but that’s about the best I can do it. It’s pretty much the opposite of Jaded, but it requires passing through all those other stages to get to just like Jaded does.

3) I had so little experience around women till my early 20s that I never had an awakening moment. Girls were so completely foreign to me (I had never even TOUCHED a girl let alone kissed one or had friendships with one or anything till I was like 23) that when I found PUA stuff, my awakening moment was just when I first tried some techniques out and the girls I tried it on responded exactly how the PUAs said they would, repeatedly, and I realized there was some kind of logical formula going on under the surface of everything and that a person could tap into that and understand and manipulate it. I just thought that was fascinating. But I was never burned hardcore by a girl or cheated on or anything…I literally just got sick of being lonely and PUA offered a step by step guide of how to fix that lol

A positive side-effect of this is that I don’t have any bitterness or anything that a lot of guys coming into game have. If someone told you a dog was friendly and then when you pet it it bit you, you’d harbor resentment and feel betrayed. But I had never even seen a dog and someone told me “hey that dog might bite you” so when I met the dog I was fully prepared for the possibility of it biting me, so I wasn’t blindsided. This has made the mental shift to loving women in general despite their faults a lot easier for me than it is for like, a guy who lost his house and kids in a brutal divorce after his One True Love cheated on him with his best friend.

A negative side-effect is that I don’t have any reference experience of girls as platonic friends. I see EVERYTHING. When my buddy’s GF puts her arm around me at the bar as we chat, I know he says “she’s just flirty”, but I also know that, if I wanted to, I could escalate that fast. So there are a lot of situations where I have to sort of bite my tongue or excuse myself from the interaction because I just see too much of what’s going on that the other guys in my group can’t see because they’re still plugged in. Girls exist completely for sex to me, which is nice for getting laid, but it made building large mixed social circles difficult/awkward for me for a few years. Now I’ve got more of a handle on it, but a guy who grew up with female friends would’ve had a lot easier time with it.

1. Thirteen years of being with a BPD wife (before realizing that BPD was even a “thing.”
2. Upon being separated from wife, becoming infatuated with a slut approaching “the wall” and trying to prove myself and “rescue her” in consistent Nice Guy fashion, only to be used as her emotional tampon in between Alpha bangs.
3. Encountering No More Mr. Nice Guy, realizing that I had a parallel story for every single vignette in that book.
4. Internalizing that I have options — more options than I did at 23 when I met my ex-wife — Ditching the Oneitis, and eventually finding my way here.

By the time I stumbled upon the manosphere, no “hard sell” was necessary, because I had already seen and experienced what women were capable of doing and rationalizing.

I’m struggling at Stage 3 right now with some ethical questions. But, first, how did I unplug?

1. Denial – Still Plugged -In:
I’d had a couple of girlfriends before 18. I could never understand why they “chose” me in the first place. It was a mystery to me that they would be turned on so much by simple actions of mine, like the fact that I never exactly gave them what they wanted, had a successful life of my own.

Then, I became super-religious (fundamentalist, in a monk-like Buddhist kind of way) and broke up painfully with my girlfriend in the quest for complete celibacy. I worshipped her at the time and she was, for me, the epitome of all virtues ever. Period. I used to be the “perfect gentleman” with her, never using swear words, never admonishing her for flaking on me time and again, and generally being an emotional tampon for her. She, on the other hand, would regularly be missing for weeks and months at a time, when she would go out with other guys (as friends, of course). But, I was the one she loved, so I didn’t really mind.

Game was in another universe. I thought you needed to be a gentleman, a very rich and successful one at that, and handsome in order to please girls.

2. Anger – Post-Red Pill:

By the time I was 20, I had grown out of the religion and was back, hoping to resume my relationship with her. Surprise! She wasn’t willing to get back that easily, despite the fact that she still “loved” me.

It took a year of constant verbal abuse from her and all kinds of unacceptable behaviour (which I endured, because I felt guilty for having broken up with her in the first place), before I had sense enough to get away from her.

I was pretty lonely after that, so I turned to the trusty Internet to produces some solutions.

Only then did it all start to fall in place. Shit tests! Was that what all the abuse had been about? Flakiness, social proof (by going out with other guys whereas I was all alone) – it all started to make sense. It was now crystal clear why my first girlfriend had been so crazy about me. I was displaying all kinds of Alpha behaviour with her – ignoring her, escalating, having a focus in my life, etc.

I was angry with myself for having taken so much shit from her and all the other people in my life.

Also, I could see that people interacted with each other on the basis of power/status. The higher-status you were, the more friends you would have, the more excited people would be about being around you. At this point, pretty much nobody really considered me to be their good friend or anything. So, yeah, I am feeling pretty low-status.

3. Bargaining – Unplugged:
Now I’m at the point where I can see more and more glimpses of the Matrix around me. I can hardly see a human interaction without noticing the role of status (alphas, betas, omegas) and the unseen side of women.

However, the biggest stumbling block for me still is that I find it hard to go down this whole power/status/Game route.

The red pill has taken me far enough down the rabbit hole to see that Game really does work, that women are attracted to these things, that Robert Greene’s Laws of Power are effective.

But, I keep facing these ethical questions –

Is it healthy to base so much of your happiness and self-esteem on your success with women and your status in society?
What if you don’t have too much success with women even after trying hard? Would that cause you a lot of sadness?
And what if you are surrounded by people much more alpha than you in a situation? What do you do to prevent yourself from feeling miserable given that you have invested your happiness in being superior to the others around you?
And using manipulative tricks (like negs, DHVs, pre-selection, false time-constraints) makes me feel squeamish because I can’t imagine these being done by any of the great guys I admire and respect. It seems unethical.
Would it be wiser to try and base your happiness on the work you do in life, etc because success there lies (mostly) in your hands? I’m a rather intelligent and creative person. I’m talking here about the Howard Roark point of view (from Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead) where he says that “the worst kind of second-hander is the one who goes after power”. The whole book is about not deriving your self-esteem from the esteem of others.

So, in my life now, I’m feeling pretty lonely cos I don’t have any friends who share my goals and ideas in life (there are classmates and family and such, but they are people who seem to like everything about me except the things that really matter to me) and no girlfriend(s) either.

And, it’s scary to consider committing myself fully to Game because I’ve had problems dealing with people who insult me, make fun of me in front of others, or put me down in any way. I don’t know how to deal with that and I guess you’ll get a lot of that if you want to become good at Game.

@Rollo:
I’m sure that these would not even be meaningful questions in your reality, but how would you answer these questions from a freshly unplugged guy?

I’m keeping myself completely open-minded here. I’m sure I have a lot more to learn about the Matrix. Especially given my (not yet fully absorbed) discoveries about us being evolutionarily wired to find happiness from social interactions and the world being fundamentally indifferent to our plight.

I can understand if you can’t respond to my question in depth, but it would be a great help if you can point me to some posts/resources that deal with the ethical aspect of Game.

I’m confident that the day will come where I will have progressed to a better state where I’m happier and more excited about life and I’m willing to do whatever it takes to get there.

“Why do my eyes hurt?” “You’ve never used them.”

My eyes are hurting pretty bad.

Thank you so much for all your clear, elaborate, and logically compelling blog posts.

well, i’m 29 now, and i did go through every single step you listed here, with a special focus on points 2, 5 and 6. all of that happened right after a 10-year-long relationship with a BPDed university student… the first 4 years i was quite an alpha guy, than she turned me (tnx to my ignorance) into a complete douche beta chump, some friends of mine told me what was going on in those days, and… here you got fase 1, than i found up that everything was actually as that guys told me… fase 2. left the witch i had some fun with fase 5, than i’ve fallen right into f.4 (yea, i had first fase 5 and than fase 4). now i’m stucked in f.6… i’m so tired of the easy nite girlies and another LTR just scares the shit out of me. sometimes there’s a backfire into fase 5 but it doesn’t last longer than a few days.
it would be far better to try as many girls as possible before you stuck yourself in a LTR without the experience you need to handle it, chances are you come out the experience as the worst cynical nihilist hahaha… well, f**k it…

I’m a pre-game-theory dinosaur. I was a jock & soldier and was kind of crude, but I’d go beta pretty easily. Still I got laid a good deal, since being fit, aggressive, loud and ill-mannered passes for Alpha in a lot of places. I didn’t get laid enough though and had dry spells sometimes lasting 3-5 months – I realize now this was because I’d go Beta when I got into an LTR.

So in good form, I’d do shit like this. I was dancing with this one hot girl, maybe a >8, but I wanted to get some. I’d been in a fight earlier in the night because I was a moron, but won and had a shiner, and a headache, and a hard on all at once. So I told her, “let’s go, we can get a coffee or go to your place.” She wanted to get another drink, and hang with her ugly friend. After about 5 minutes of this, I told her ugly friend, “you want to go fuck? I want to fuck, *she* doesn’t want to, but I think you do.” The ugly friend – an eager 5 on a good day – went with me, and on the way out the hot chick got really pissy, and I said, “I want to go now, and you don’t, but your friend does, seeya.” So, I did the deed, and a few weeks later ran into the hot chick and got her too. That was probably stage 4, I realized there was some major venality going on in the market place. Yet I’d backslide and go around white knighting from time to time and didn’t really get the larger picture. Then an ex-LTR parachuted back into my life, and we dated a little but I was totally confused by her. Later I found out she was engaged to a friend of mine – this didn’t bug me in the least since I was over her but the way she tried to fuck with my feelings and life put me in real distress. So I called my best friend, a cousin who is a little older, and a lifelong player, pure natural, who still (at 55) catches more poon than the Gloucester fisherman catches haddock. He told me to be lazy and diffident, like a shitty wide receiver or shortstop. “If the ball lands in your hands, make a decisive play. Don’t run or dive for it, or extend your arms even. Remember, you don’t give a shit if that ball isn’t going to land in your hands.” So I took him up on that – I’d hit on a girl, if she didn’t like me, I’d move on. I went with that.

From that point on, I’d ask out any girl that I thought looked good. I’d take her out, bang her as soon as possible, and when she talked LTR I’d negotiate her into booty call status. I kept the plates spinning for a few years, had a nice semi-harem going, but still had some beta tendencies. Eventually, on a weekend when i was seeing three different girls, I met this good looking blonde who had a very interesting character and similar outlook to mine. I wound up marrying her, proposing after several weeks of dating, asking the question after I’d just hammered her into submission. (No bended knee crap). Pretty Alpha, huh? The Alpha thing comes and goes though.

Since then, I’ve vacillated a bit and slipped into earlier stages, haven’t led the house as well as I should have. Truth is, I’m probably more Sigma than Alpha – flaky, like rolling my own way, rather than playing stupid bullshit pecking order games, which work but which seem irritatingly simple and banal. I’m very successful at work, a special counsel / fixer sort of lawyer, very well respected & liked but essentially outside of the chain of command, occasionally stepping up to lead significant work projects or run stuff in the community, easing from my mid-40’s into senescence.

So my marriage is okay, but my wife has been a pain in the ass since having kids. I did a lot for a long time to make her happy on the principle “Happy wife = a happy life,” but it never was happy enough – she always sported the put-upon attitude. About a year and a half ago I discovered game blogs and realized that I could do a lot more with this situation with a few tweaks. So I started being more of a pain in the ass and assertive at home, told her to get off her ass and get a job if she wanted more luxuries than I was providing, and stepped up into a couple community leadership roles. I also started carrying myself a little differently, like I used to, with head up, shoulders back, always making eye contact with women and sort of assertively questioning them as if I were their boss – “How’d the swim meet go? Did you finally get that guy to pay the homeowner’s association? How are you planning on putting together the village Ice Cream Social?” How do you rehab a wife of 20 years? Easy (in concept anyhow), you assert some independence and leadership, and you flirt with women your wife sees as a threat. I have no intent of banging any of them – but when the wife sees a hot MILF wander up and give a too-long hug and offer thanks for something I did for cub scouts or the town council, she gets wicked jealous, and then we have complete peace in the house for a week because she *knows* I could pull the ripcord if I really wanted to. Now if I can just get her off her ass and hitting the gym a bit more often, I’ll be quite happy with the situation. Yeah, I’d love to be banging a smokin’ hot 25 year old, who wouldn’t, but it’d be a chick move to trade up just for sex, a man recognizes when his wife has been basically really good, worked for him for a long time, and tries to help her maximize her assets rather than bailing out. She’s still a beautiful woman inside, and doing the best she can, and it’s not like trading her in for another woman wouldn’t just be trading for the same set of problems just attached to some firmer tits. Doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy the attention of local MILFs tho…

So I guess I finally got through to stage 6 after starting to read Dalrock and Athol Kay 18 months or so ago. I’ve had a sense of peace about it and have come to understand myself a bit better, and to use the knowledge and my natural characteristics to make my life a little better. Self-knowledge and situational awareness are both really important and younger guys today need to appreciate the way that many of the the Manosphere writers are laying that stuff out there for them. My life is fine, but had I known then what I know now, I’d have held out until after law school, married a 9 instead of a 7, and would have played the game quite a bit better over the last 20 years. The things we learn…

My mother married several times and had sex with men who were married.
She also was violent and psychologically abusive. Very much a modern
woman as they move toward behaving in ways that were reserved for men
and you will see this reflected in women failing in ways similar to men such
as prison, addiction and homelessness.

This behavior that is usually the domain of men freed me from the trap
of thinking women were morally superior to me as an extension of a healthy maternal love between mother and child.

I was able to see women with the same objectivity that I do men as each person acting in their self interest.

I enjoy women without the need to enslave myself to them because I do
not have the child like need to keep my mother close through another woman trying to find the same nurturing love of childhood.

As women change, the relationship sons experience with their mothers will change and so than will the relations between men and women.

Mothers teach their sons about women by their behavior and their behavior is that of men.

In my opinion there will become a clear division between two types of men.
The man who wants to be dominanted by women because he was by his mother and stays a passive child or the man who refuses to be and becomes a fully actualized human being, which wil be the road less traveled.

Single parent housholds led by mothers will change the complete expression of western culture by changing men and womens attitudes
toward each other in intimate relations and the state will step in to
confront the economic instability this creates which will add to the instability.

I’m not sure what stage I’m in. I’m 28 everything I’ve experienced and observed leaves no doubt that the game folks (rollo, heartiste, roosh, etc) are right. I’ve come to terms with it and understand that that’s the way it has to be. I’ve helped friends tighten their games; they still ask me how to handle girl problems.

The problem is with me. I can see it working for other men but have a hard time implementing it myself. I have this unrealistic(?) fear of creeping girls out. It’d be one thing if they were girls from my social circle, but it happens even with girls I know I’ll never see again. Why would I even care about creeping a random girl out?

It’s like I’m a sports announcer who can’t play the game.

I probably should add I’ve done ok with girls (the friends who ask me for help do significantly better than me). I feel like a major underachiever because I’m in a perfect situation to kill it and instead I scrape by.

Wow, the timing. I just wrote a post today about one of my first unplugging experiences.

I’m still struggling with the process as, you even mentioned about those getting out of bad relationships – I’m struggling with getting out of a relationship with a BPD.

I’m starting to wonder if I myself am Borderline. That’s a scary thought. I feel like I’ve become borderline by being with a borderline. Though, you and others have given me hope in that I feel like I will at one time be a much better man for having experienced the terror that was this last year.

I suppose I fear that despite the horrid nature of being with this woman, I won’t experience a high like she’s been able to give me. And I am sure that high only exists because of the lows provided and provoked by her.

I look forward to reading everyones comments. Great post. I actually considered doing exactly this – and even have a drafted article not unlike yours posted here somewhere in my archives. Awesome work as always. Thanks!

“Is it healthy to base so much of your happiness and self-esteem on your success with women and your status in society?”

I don’t think so. You should be happy with or without a woman in your life. It’s ok to want to up your status, but you should get yourself to a place where you’re generally happy with it. You don’t have to beat yourself up if you’re not the highest status person around all the time. You always want to better yourself, but bettering yourself isn’t always about status. Status and women are not the magic ingredients to happiness, although happiness will always boost your status and success with women.

“What if you don’t have too much success with women even after trying hard? Would that cause you a lot of sadness?”

Well, that would probably cause anyone a little bit of frustration, at the very least. Usually women will jump all over a man who has a good life and is happy and confident, so it probably means there is something wrong. Maybe you’re too desperate, maybe you are faking confidence, maybe you’re attracted to the wrong women. If you’re truly happy and confident without a woman, then rejection like this shouldn’t hurt you too much because you really haven’t lost anything. Easier said than done, because rejection is difficult for everyone, but objectively it’s true – you just take a step back, look at yourself with honesty, and figure things out. Take the road toward becoming the person that you want to be, not the road that leads to what others want you to be.

“And what if you are surrounded by people much more alpha than you in a situation? What do you do to prevent yourself from feeling miserable given that you have invested your happiness in being superior to the others around you?”

No. You don’t tie your happiness to being better than everyone else. You are simply happy with who you are, where you are in life, and where you’re going. If you’re jealous of the guy who makes twice what you make or gets women easier than you, then there’s something wrong, because that guy is always going to exist.

“No. You don’t tie your happiness to being better than everyone else. You are simply happy with who you are, where you are in life, and where you’re going. If you’re jealous of the guy who makes twice what you make or gets women easier than you, then there’s something wrong, because that guy is always going to exist.”

Ok. So, if I understand you correctly, you’re saying that I should just do my best and enjoy whatever results I get. The aim is not to beat everyone else, it’s just to have as much fun as I can.

“Women should only ever be a complement to a Man’s life, never the focus of it.”

I guess this ties up the two ways of thinking – having a strong focus and ambition in life and deriving happiness and self-satisfaction from my life’s work (which I do) and being successful socially. You’re saying that I should keep trying to better myself in life and reaching my goals. And at the same time, on the side, improve my skills with women and enjoy with them without making them the focus.

Just writing my comment clarified a lot of things in my head. 🙂

To answer my questions (which now seem rather foolish) based on your comments:
“Is it healthy to base so much of your happiness and self-esteem on your success with women and your status in society?”
That was never the point. Women (and, I’m guessing, other people’s opinions) are not the focus of your life. Your focus is whatever your focus is.

“What if you don’t have too much success with women even after trying hard? Would that cause you a lot of sadness?”
Failure anywhere would cause at least some sadness. You just have to deal with it. If it isn’t worth risking failure, then it isn’t a worthwhile goal in the first place.

“And what if you are surrounded by people much more alpha than you in a situation? What do you do to prevent yourself from feeling miserable given that you have invested your happiness in being superior to the others around you?”

Anon: “No. You don’t tie your happiness to being better than everyone else. You are simply happy with who you are, where you are in life, and where you’re going. If you’re jealous of the guy who makes twice what you make or gets women easier than you, then there’s something wrong, because that guy is always going to exist.”

I think I get it. The aim isn’t to be THE most alpha guy ever or THE highest status guy. It’s just to meet your standards and be happy.

I guess this is like competition in any other part of life. What do you do when somebody scores higher than you on tests? You just deal with it. It’s a fact of life. Better people will exist. That needn’t take away from my achievements.

“Would it be wiser to try and base your happiness on the work you do in life…”

I guess this is what Rollo meant when he said that women should be a complement to your life, not the focus.

“Would it be wiser to try and base your happiness on the work you do in life…”

You’re right that work is something that might be a little more under your control, but ‘basing’ your happiness on any one thing can be a recipe for eventual catastrophe. Sure, go ahead and build your work skills so that you are marketable. You can be happy about that, and about the work you produce. But life isn’t just about work. Cultivate friendships and relationships, travel, get good at some things other than your profession, read and learn… just a few examples.

There’s a flip side also, though. The examples I listed are generally considered hobbies or fun diversions. You should also do things like learning to discipline yourself, challenge yourself, break out of your comfort zone, etc. While these are not often considered ‘fun diversions’, they are also important to living a balanced and full life.

Rollo .. Im at the jaded point .. but its with full acceptance that steps do ..have to be taken .. SO when you have a wee bit of free time (between research and the next gig) can I get some help?Right now the only thing I got going is gonna be turning 42 . no kids ,never been married ..email me at bravolupo@gmail.com .. Ive had struggles with the password loops on Sosuave .. thanx

I was sitting at a table at a sports bar with a pilot, a truck driver and a Marine MP. All of them have screaming hot wives and are 15 years younger than I am. We were discussing eye contact.

“Want to know something about eye contact with a girl?”, the pilot asked. I nodded. “If you make eye contact with a woman, NEVER be the first to look away. Trust me.”

I didn’t. For the next week, I tried it on the college girls I went to school with. To a girl, their attitudes towards me improved…vastly. Every. Last. One of them. So, seeing that there was something to this, I started scouring the internet for WHY making a girl break eye contact first had the effect it did…which led to So Suave and the rest is history.

There have been PARTS of Game theory that I have struggled with, (Chicks did jerks) but the general premise was proven to me when a hot 23 year old asked fat 38 year old me out.

Stage 5. 4 years of all-boys school. 4 years of engineering college – little to any females. In college “the pickup artist” on vh1 aired and I got hooked. For some reason game made sense to me. It also helped that I kept in touch with a natural alpha friend who acts like an asshole and would always share stories with me about his sexcapades.

@Anon:
You’re absolutely right. What I meant by “your work” was more like “your creative output”, not what you do for money. It would include everything from your profession to your hobbies, challenging yourself (intellectually, physically, socially), learning to think better, building a great character, expanding your comfort zone, etc.

Things are clearer now and I’m taking more action with a similar-minded friend of mine. Thanks for the comment.

I came across a link to the Roissy/Heartiste site a couple of years ago on reddit. Some guy was bemoaning losing a girl he never had, suffering severe oneitis and realizing he was irrevocably trapped in the friend zone despite doing everything “right”, a fate that I had far too much personal experience with. A commenter just wrote “dude…” and a link to The Chateau. (Its funny how the mind remembers life-changing events like that comment, similar to how people recall what they were doing when the space shuttle blew up or when they first heard about the WTC bombings).

I read everything on that site in a few weeks. There was no denying the truth of it as I had ample evidence within me and around me to verify many of the conclusions. There was no going back and I knew it immediately. I discovered other sites and with a bit of experimentation and observation in my own social interactions I was led to further confirmation of the truth. I’m still not sure where it will go. But it was now clear that I had been taught and accepted a lie, like Santa Claus, and failed to figure it out for most of my adult life.

As far as these 6 steps, I can’t really say because it has not been a linear process. I discovered the knowledge later in life, in my late 40’s, and this changes the whole dynamic of understanding and using the new knowledge. Certainly there is anger and at times despair in the realization of the chasm between how I thought women and relationships work and the reality I now see. There is sadness in the pointless frustrations and lost loves of the past because I was unaware of the truth.
But now I take nothing at face value, I ruthlessly question everything. I have no choice.

To see “how deep the rabbit-hole goes”, I question whether the 5 steps are really appropriate for a man. To my post red-pill mind they sound like a description of the operation of a modern woman’s mind. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression all sound like female (or possibly beta) coping mechanisms when faced with the truth. (The 5 steps are almost certainly the product of modern, feminist psychologists but I don’t know the intellectual source off hand). As coping strategies, these methods won’t even work for a man. And then there is a problem with the meaning of the words — is the anger of a man the same as the anger of a woman? My experience says no. As far as can be ascertained, the anger of a woman is not (necessarily) rooted in any concept of justice as it (usually) is with a man. The closest male equivalent would be frustration but even that is a poor translation.

I don’t think the correct label for stage 6 should be “jaded”, I’m not really sure what it should be called. Most of the game gurus eventually reach the conclusion that getting all that pussy doesn’t actually make you happy. (See Krauser for example). It really is about what you want to do with your life, who you want to share it with and what kind of man you choose to become. In the end I think that game, the red pill, unplugging from the matrix, etc are all euphemism for learning how to become a man, knowledge that was lost by the previous generation of men in their appeasement of feminism.

Hell since we’re sharing. I took the red pill officially 8 months ago. Dissolution of my LTR bought about by beta backsliding led me looking for answers. A friend introduced me to Roosh, Chateau, FFY, D&P and I stumbled upon SMGP and Rational a little later. I still find myself running through stages but more and more I internalize the teachings of the manosphere and like minded individuals I associate with and as my friend said you start seeing life as full of possibilities. “The mission not the girl is most important” this in particular rings true with me, throwing myself into weight training, swimming, and a business venture and making girls secondary (and the subsequent success) to this is somewhat liberating and bewildering. In hindsight I’ve always had some natural alpha tendencies brought about by my father (old school alpha). Recognising those traits and burying the beta tendencies as opposed to having to learn a completely new skill set has helped the ingestion period somewhat. I will admit there are days where I’m angry, angry that being a cocky asshole is so effective, angry that I did everything ‘right’ but got completely shat on cos she wasn’t haaapy, angry because the more I see, the less likely it is I will get married and procreate with what passes for women in the western world these days. Days such as this are becoming scarcer mostly cos when that anger hits I look at myself in the mirror and think: “I’m 28, in amazing shape, a burgeoning business, and a nice little harem to boot.” First world problems indeed and I owe it to the red pill. On a side note rollo I owe you a beer. Rant over.

Just wanted to share a video that helped me alot in understanding the concept of splitting yourself from work/career mode and game pulling ass mode. If you’re a man that has his shit together and wants to pull every weekend the balance between the two can be very fulfilling. Not sure if it’s appropriate posting rollo, feel free to remove.

“maybe George Sodini, Andres Breivik, James Holmes wasn’t so crazy after all.”

Im from Norway. Andrers Behring Breivik killed 77 innocent children and teenagers on the Island of utøya – including friends of mine – due to his hatred for a multicultural society. How the fuck can that be rational and not crazy? Even if a multicultural society is not the way to go – how can the killings of innocent teenagers not be crazy? I love the manospehere, Rollo – And your blog is rare due to the fact that, judging by your writing you do not have any hatred for women whatsoever, and thats rare in the manospehere. But please – dont drag people such as Anders Behring Breivik into the mix – its barely a year ago, and still fresh in the minds of most Norwegean people, wait for a couple of years.

The existing “manosphere” is basically negative, for good reason. The two main ideas it is built around are “women are sluts” and “the socio-economic-political system is operating as it was designed (meaning it is logically moving forward based on its assumptions and ends).” These concepts do not illicit happiness, hope, or goals. This justifiable lack of enthusiasm seems to have led many “manosphere” personalities to endlessly find new frames and examples to continuously drive home these two ideas with little content on what happens after they are accepted. This leads to the vast majority of readers having to choose between the “feminist-unicorn land” and the “woe to men” social contexts.

This is not to say the current “manosphere” is not justified. The acceptance of its ideas kills the “Captain-Save-A-Ho” and “Hero” dynamic men have been conditioned to accept their whole lives, so it comes as no surprise most never truly accept them. It is this dynamic that continuously pops up over and over in reader comment sections, proving that most readers are just in a different, more refined frame regarding the SMP and their role in it. Thus, the “manosphere” is perceived to be lacking any affirmative position.

To that end, is there any interest in creating a community where “post-manosphere” men can share their experiences, interests, and affirmative life-styles? The community would be pre-screened and exclusive, apolitical, and focus on constructive ideas for “post manosphere” men in this society. Hopefully, it would take on a lighter, more humorous tone regarding the fucked up place we inhabit, while supporting and helping guide its members.

I take your point and I think pro-active is always better. But you have to look at how most of us got here. In some way or other we were had, cheated and mistreated and by those family and institutions we should have been able to rely upon and usually at formative stages. Nobody likes being made into a sap, and one thing about the manosphere is we come to the realization that we are not alone and that our instincts and experiences are actually widespread. It is only natural for men want to vent and get it out.

Take the sexual equation out of it altogether. Look at the work that Gary Taubes has done or the DVD series ‘The Secrets to Mental Math’. Mathematics is a tool that should be available to everybody who would extend themselves, yet in my schooling it was predominantly for those who were already good, with protracted verbal abuse reserved for anybody else along with the unspoken faculty dare to talk back. As for Taubes, think of the pestilential Food Pyramid, one would have to suppose because they couldn’t construct it of raw bullshit. Those things leave me fairly red assed at this point in time as well, but they don’t stop me from moving ahead and integrating the best of what I always thought about nutrition anyway and the short route to the numerically right answer. That said, it is just as well that most of my former Math teachers have already been shown across, not to put too fine a point on it.

I would also advocate you take heart; the place is not as fucked up as you say there is just an annoying minority of loud fucked up people, big difference. Consider the Chik Fil A nonsense, homosexuals make up something less than 5% of the population, yet we hear about them non stop. As with feminazi’s they are neither many nor strong, just loud. Since time immemorial societies have put their young men to tests and trials. Whether Spartan, Iroquois, or Mongol or the guys who are gutting it out at Ranger School even now. But it is only in modern times that the social order has sought to break it’s young men into Beta’s and surgically castrated White Knights. This noisy media-indoctrination crap that sprang from the 60’s like another form of untreatable post antibiotic clap is a fad. Time is on OUR side,

Got married young….lasted 3 1/2 years…one daughter….was lonely and destitute afterward. Took me ten years to work my head above water. Became a male nurse where I basically work with unhappy and needy women all the time. (coworkers…not patients..lol) Anyways was like an all you can eat poon buffet!! Bad decisions, bad LTR’s….but obtaining the attitude that “Nothing gets you over the last one…like the next one”…kept me sane and moving through the swamp. Finally was at the point that I did what I want…when I wanted….had and continue to have an awesome relationship with my now grown daughter…and got all the female attention I cared to get…usually along with whatever the heck I told them to bring me to drink!! When Vox blogged about GAME…he mentioned that if you want to know where you are….you have to let women who have known you for a long time tell you where you are on the list. I allowed two of my female friends to read the articles and they said without a doubt that I was a Sigma. Ok…fine then….I went on with what I will classify as my “perfect” life when a young lady I have basically known all my life showed up at one of my parties….Totally turned my life upside down….and I had already taken the red pill!!!!! I knew I was in trouble…..Broke rules……..that Beta stuff is always in there…..ALWAYS!!…..Had to fight it….for months….now has become more second nature….Continue to read and keep up with the blogs….just like working out….trying to stay on top of my game!!! I did not need the Manosphere at all….until I got into a LTR post Red Pill!! Now I use it to stay sharp and try to understand what the heck is going on!! She needs me to be a man….and she is 100% woman…..We just enjoy the skit out of each other…no pressure….no talk of what is next…just enjoying life….Celebrate one year in three days!!!! For a guy with numbers nearing 200….that is INCREDIBLE!!!!

It’s been a year since I divorced my sexless wife of five years. It’s funny how it got worse and worse and I was totally oblivious. Dude her parents were in the next room and I would rub it all over her pussy and she would be wet wet wet… while we were still engaged. She had vaginismus since the start of our marriage. I was understanding and waited, poor little stupid me. (Rollo, how does vaginismus compute from the game point of view?)

Towards the end of the fifth year I could no longer stay sane, and she would happily go shoe shopping with her friends, ignoring sex, assuming it never existed at all. After two drunken, semi-conscious fights we divorced. I changed cities, had a fresh start. What was I thinking when I read Heartiste’s referens on HUS, I do not know. Perhaps I was searching for hookup or something similar. Well done Susan, thank you for that.

I’m not bargaining. Everything I read on Rollo/Heartiste/JBaMAI/Yohami rings loud bells of deja vu. I have seen it all play out in front of me and I did not notice, I did not comprehend. I’m angry I have let myself get molded into this, I’m angry my parents molded me into this beta/chivalry shit. I’m still terribly afraid to approach. But it will sink in, I will try, I will jump. I cringe with shock as I watch Krauser’s videos with him chatting up women in all silly ways. It is so scarily real.

What’s even funnier, I was quite into Ross Jeffries and Maniac High’s sites back when I was in college in 99. They had much more of a gimmicky nature with lots of NLP sauce on them so I did not give them a try. I wonder if anyone can explain. How did game evolve from the NLP based stuff to more evolutionary psychology based standards of today? Was it publishing of the Red Queen/Sperm Wars? Can anyone track it back from those days?

I would think Ross’s site was a treasure. What you have here is essentially the blue-print to the A-Bomb. Yet you are right. It’s tough to wake everyone up, if they had not had their nights’ sleep and dreams. It is so relieving to know that someone knows the answers and is willing to share them. Thank you guys.

I’d been physically and mentally abused by my mother and older sister, and my dad did nothing to stop it. I’d been told that I was selfish and immature, and had feminism drilled into me since kindergarten. I was a sub-omega sap, bitter and fearful. In 40 years I’ve been on perhaps 10 dates, and never actually had sex. It was really frustrating in my teens and twenties, but the biological urges are mostly gone now, and I have no alimony, child support, consumer debt, etc. The redpill/hypergamy/game stuff is fascinating to read, and illuminating, but ultimately I know I’ll never have sex, marriage, kids, etc. The funny thing is, after years of abuse, mom has finally mellowed out, thanks to menopause and Prozac. She needles me for grand kids as I’m the eldest son, and here is absolutely no chance of that. My branch of the family dies with me, and as much as that frustrates her, it delights my dad.

I’ve been a red pill guy for almost a year now. It happened after my 3 year LTR gf broke up with me back in may of 2011. Her home state was on the other side of the country and she kept me on a string for the whole of the coming summer up until about october. I kept giving her self-affirmation like a proper beta but eventually i found solvemygilrproblems.com shark unplugged me. I remember when i first read the site, i was in utter denial and im assuming because of the volatile cocktail of chemicals my mind was already in as a cause of my oneitis, it helped me further rationalize away the information on the site.

ironically, when i was in my early 20s, i had natural game. mostly from watching a few natural alphas and learning from them and was cultivating it and my confidence nicely. It wasnt until i got with my first gf and she cheated on me that i truly let the beta in me take over. i made the classic mistake of reverse rationalizing the entire situation and patting myself on the back for “being” different from other guys and being “loyal” even when my gf wasn’t. I lied to myself so much that i eventually believed it. my self righteousness was disgusting to say the least and how i got with the latter LTR girl is beyond me.

I later found my way back to shark’s site after getting an emotional grip on myself and began to read it daily. slowly but surely it started sinking in. i understood what i was reading most of the time, but its not until you fully internalize it that you really ‘get it’. i reverted back to my old confident self….but better, much better. new clothes, new haircut, new attitude, new swag. i would say that i went through these phases fairly quickly. not too long ago i was in the “jaded” phase. but i think that phase is congruent with the “caring asshole” attitude. im at a point now where i truly dont care. i understand the way a chicks mind works and the outcome is all the same to me because if i fail here and there, i need only tweak what im doing and voila, problem solved. i could care less for a LTR or marriage right now even though i have 2 girls currently in “love” with me that are 2 points above any ex ive ever had among a few others that are backups in the harem.

i want to love one of these girls and let myself be vulnerable. but i find it exceedingly difficult knowing the reality of a females nature. and then i remind myself everyday “its much better for these hotties to be texting me that im an ‘asshole’ because i dont reply rather then have them tell me one day ‘can we take a break?’

I have been going back and forth through these steps for two reasons:
1) Lack of solid arguments (initially everything was too unscientific)
2) An “alpha” friend would always ridiculize me every time I was trying to unplug

Last weekend, for the first time in my whole life, I went out alone and ended up with two girls in a bar.

more I read, more I realize that cunts aren’t worth even a fraction of the effort. had a personal account these past five months which confirms that there are no bitches which are exceptions to the rules of the game and that they deserve all the drama and predations visited upon them by psychos.

Hookers are were it’s all at. Any sane man would just look out for himself and leave these split tails to their well deserved fate.

I’m currently fleeting between Anger and Depression. I’m pissed off at the lies society give us and after taking the Red Pill I see examples of it constantly. I’m in Depression because I have, until now, spent my 23 years ridiculing something I viewed as obnoxious, shallow and disrespectful and now realize I could’ve just copied them to be popular. All the sex not had during my teens takes me back to Anger. I’m thankful age of consent is 16 here – I will have mine.

Whenever someone comes off as a Natural or generally present strong values which attracts women, I ask if they had a strong father figure, almost like a reflex. It’s a common theme – beta boys were raised mainly by their mother with a weak or completely absent father figure. (Again – blaming from the Anger stage. I hate that my father was such a pushover and anti-violence. He wouldn’t let me work out in the gym or take martial arts. I’m convinced my mother broke him into betaness because he used to be an Army Lieutenant and had a motorcycle in his 20s. But he let her break him.)

I’m 51 and am somewhere in the Post-Red-Pill and disinterested stage. I started off reading NMMNG, then onto MMSL, and then WOTSM – that was last fall (so only about 6-8 months into the understanding the whole thing). I am a child of late 70’s and was hitting my stride in the 80’s. But what brought me to this point – of consider anything of this information – was my failed marriage, separation, and pending divorce.

I still fight the mental fight about loving my STBXW and wanting to “convince” her that we need to get back together and being so pissed off at her, that I can barely think. I still don’t have my balls back when dealing with her – after 17 years of marriage, it’s difficult to break those patterns of thoughts and behaviors (but not impossible).

So there is a very bitter taste with the red pill – and at my age there is always that voice in the back of your head saying “why did you waste so much time?” – but none of that really matters. It’s about me as a man, and being the best dad I can be to my kids. Literally, women are way in the back of mind right now.

I am never eager to approve of killing. However comma, the people that Breivik killed were on the island for the purpose of further ethnic-cleansing the Norsk people. They were not innocent children. They started a race war; Breivik terminated their ability to continue their genocidal ideas.

A girl showed me r/theredpill about a year ago. Being the beta I was I declared to her how stupid and mysognistic those lame virgins were. Then when my ex moved away and we started our invisible friendship. I looked into it more but it hurt to read, it was scary but I felt like I was too far in. I tried to ignore it for a while and focus on my LDR and told myself that everything would be OK and how I was different (lol) but eventually we broke up and it crushed me. She fucked another guy 4 days later and it was a world destroyer. That’s when I unplugged. Right now I’m between stages 4 and 5. It isn’t so bad anymore, I just recognise that the sexes are different and that’s what we deal with as men.

I unplugged after a long relationship with a single mom. I saw the dark side of the male/female relationship.I saw that women are not special snowflakes who should be put on a pedestal and treated with the most respect. I saw that the more you depend on them, the more they screw you over, the more you give, the more they take. I would definitely say that I am on the depression stage. Knowing what I know now, there is no way I can see the world different. At 24, I have realized the only one you can really trust is yourself and that women need to be treated as play things.Nothing more. I guess you could say I am bitter, but then again who said taking the red pill was going to be a pleasant experience.